We are all Shane Montgomery.

Why am I saying this? Let’s start at the beginning.

Shane Montgomery disappeared after a night out with friends that included a stop at one of Manayunk’s most popular hangouts, Kildare’s Irish Pub on Main Street.

At 21, Shane Montgomery was still a kid, a boy with some “man growth” but essentially still in adult formation mode. At age 21, few of us have a firm grip on reality, even if many 21-year-olds pretend that the opposite is true.

Being 21 is not easy. For instance, for most 21-year-olds the tendency is to judge the world, our friends and family, harshly. The twenties are a time when emotions and mental attitudes go up and down like an erratic seismograph. At that age we are on the hunt for what mature philosophers call a centered personal equilibrium.

I’m not saying that Shane Montgomery judged anybody, but at 21 he undoubtedly found himself in that “almost mature” formation space described above. When I was Shane’s age I was often in hyper-critical overdrive. When I look back on those days I sometimes feel a little embarrassed. Was I really so critical and arrogant?

Shane Montgomery lived in Roxborough, Manayunk’s next door neighbor, so Kildare’s on Main Street probably had a home turf feel for him. When Shane’s friends (and cousin) left him alone at Kildare’s they probably thought nothing of it. Being alone in a bar is not necessarily a bad thing. People sometimes go to bars alone to meet a special someone because that’s harder to do in a group situation.

Quite a number of people, upon hearing the news that Shane had drowned in the   Schuylkill River, offered theories as to what they thought may have happened to him.

Some suggested that he may have accidentally fallen into the river because he was drunk, while others offered the bizarre theory that he was a victim of a so-called Smiley Face serial killer. One off-the-wall theory even suggested suicide.

But what is significant for me is the love and loyalty shown by Shane Montgomery’s family as divers spent almost two months searching for his body. The television news reports were painful to watch, especially the clip of his mother speaking to reporters after his body was found near the Manayunk Brewery. The magnitude of his parents’ sorrow indicates that they felt only unconditional love for their 21 year old son.

Most of us have encountered risky life situations in which we could have ended up as a fatality.

Whether this means stopping your car on the side of a busy highway to change a flat tire and getting hit by a passing car, or waiting for the 15 bus outside the Gold Club on West Girard Avenue in Fishtown as that January 3rd shooter fired a gun, wounding two men. I could have be you or I  happening to be standing nearby that night. Or how about narrowly escaping (or not escaping) getting hit by a car while crossing Aramingo Avenue?

In some ways, we are all Shane Montgomery because unusual coincidences, like being at the wrong place at the wrong time, can alter our lives forever.

This is true even for those of us who take great pains to avoid possible mishaps and disaster. Consider the following family story I heard over the holidays:  My sister-in-law recounted how her fear of flying got her to talk my brother into taking the train to Florida for a family trip. For my sister-in-law the train appeared to be a much safer mode of transportation despite the fact that the train ticket cost three times what it cost to fly.

Feeling confident that she had life’s unexpected disasters minimized, she packed her husband and two kids into a southern bound Amtrak train, not in the least minding that the sleeping berths for the four of them were very small.

While the first leg of their journey went smoothly, something happened after the train left Baltimore and Washington and headed further south.

As the train crossed a highway, the road toll gates stopping traffic failed to go down and the train hit a car or two, killing one of the drivers. My brother’s wife and kids were thrown out of their berths as smoke poured into the train. For a time they had no idea what would happen to them.

Would they live? Would they die?

By avoiding the “dangerous” airplane, my sister-in-law had experienced a possible loss of life by taking the safer (“I’m being extra cautious”) train.

People say about Shane: Why didn’t he go straight home? Why didn’t he leave Kildare’s with his friends? Why this and why that. But when we’re really living life or in the throes of a party with friends, we rarely think that one inconsequential choice made along the way will lead to tragedy or death.

I remember the time I hitchhiked near Paoli when I was Shane’s age. With my thumb out, standing on the side of the road, I was happy when a Volkswagen stopped to pick me up. But no sooner was I inside the car when the driver looked at me and growled, “We’re going straight to hell!”

What a relief it was when I discovered that the threat was a joke, but what if it had been real? Suppose the driver had driven me to an isolated part of Chester County and disposed of me in serial killer fashion? Would my family and friends have asked: why I went into a strange car? Why I couldn’t see that the driver was dangerous? And why I just didn’t walk home?

When you’re 21 you don’t think of death as something that could really happen to you. Death is an abstract idea, more remote than watching a Good Year blimp flying out over the ocean and into the horizon.

Any number of things could have happened to Shane Montgomery that night– small inconsequential choices, like taking the train instead of a plane, somehow put him at the river’s edge and led to his untimely demise.